Quotes: Contemplation
Contemplation here appears both as a disciplined path and a sudden opening: the Bhagavad Gita and Rumi emphasize steady inner practice, while Chris Evans and John Lennon point to fleeting, unplanned moments that still the mind.
Running through these voices is the tension between thinking and quiet — Descartes’ emphasis on thought contrasts with Crazy Horse’s sense of an inner unity. The collection asks how effort and surrender meet, and what doors these experiences might open toward a different relation to self and world.
6 quotes on this theme, each with its source and insight
The quotes
“Little by little, through patience and repeated effort, the mind will become stilled in the Self.”
Source: Bhagavad Gita, 6.25 · Check the source
Verified attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- The idea matches Bhagavad Gita 6.25, where Krishna advises gradually calming the mind through repeated effort.
- What remains uncertain
- The English sentence is a paraphrase that faithfully renders the verse’s meaning but is not a literal canonical translation of the Sanskrit.
The line teaches that inner stillness is earned, not granted. In Chapter 6 Krishna frames the goal of meditation as a gradual settling of the mind through steady, patient practice. The quoted wording is a later English rendering that captures the verse’s essential message.
“Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.”
Source: Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy), Double Fantasy, 1980 · Check the source
Verified attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- The wording appears as a lyric in John Lennon’s song “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)”, released on Double Fantasy in 1980.
The line compresses a soft but urgent truth: life keeps moving while you schedule the future. As a lyric written for his son, it frames that truth as parental tenderness rather than a bitter maxim. It appears in John Lennon’s 1980 song “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)”.
“There are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors.”
Source: no specific work is documented · Check the source
Disputed attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- Quote investigators report no evidence for this wording in Blake and trace a similar formulation to Ray Manzarek, cited in Newsweek (c.1967).
- What remains uncertain
- The attribution to Blake is likely apocryphal; similarity to Blake’s authentic «doors of perception» line seems to have encouraged the false credit.
The image of «doors» frames knowing as a threshold—what we perceive determines what we can know. The exact wording, however, is not found in Blake; it likely owes its form to later rock‑era paraphrases that echo Blake’s famous line about the doors of perception.
“The point is that when I see a sunset or a waterfall or something, for a split second it's so great, because for a little bit I'm out of my brain, and it's got nothing to do with me. I'm not trying to figure it out, you know what I mean? And I wonder if I can somehow find a way to maintain that mind stillness.”
Source: Interview, GQ — Chris Evans: American Marvel (Edith Zimmerman), June 14, 2011
Verified attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- The wording is drawn from the GQ interview published June 14, 2011, where Evans speaks about being “out of my brain.”
- What remains uncertain
- Attribution is strong—it's a dated magazine interview—but printed transcriptions can slightly smooth spontaneous speech.
Evans describes that sudden, wordless pause the world gives you when a sunset or waterfall silences your inner chatter. It’s a candid interview moment—less a polished aphorism than a lived wish to hold onto that brief mind-stillness.
“I salute the light within your eyes where the whole universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am at that place within me, we shall be one.”
Source: no specific work is documented · Check the source
MisattributedWhat we know
- What is documented
- Evidence indicates the quotation is misattributed to Crazy Horse; commentators trace its wording to modern inspirational literature, notably a link to Paulo Coelho's 1997 work in one analysis.
- What remains uncertain
- No primary nineteenth‑century source supports Crazy Horse saying this. The phrase spread through online collections and memes, making its true literary origin difficult to pin down.
The line pictures two people meeting at the same inner center and becoming a single, shared universe. It expresses intimate spiritual union and mutual presence more than political or historical ideas. Its language reads like modern inspirational prose, which helps explain its popularity.
“I think, therefore I am.”
Source: Discourse on the Method ; Meditations on First Philosophy · Check the source
Verified attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- Descartes is securely tied to the cogito; his writings present the argument in several formulations, Latin and vernacular.
- What remains uncertain
- The concise Latin tag functions as a canonical label; Descartes used varying phrasings such as “I am, I exist,” and the exact French wording is a later rendering.
The cogito isolates a minimal certainty: thinking proves the existence of a thinking self in that instant. Descartes used this to rebuild knowledge from a point immune to radical doubt, reshaping modern ideas about subjectivity and reason.